The lens blur is designed to more closely mimic the depth of field bokeh effects created by real lenses. It can be used in conjunction with a depth map to selectively blur different areas of the frame to different degrees.

Here's an example of lens blur in action:

Here is the original frame:

Note how the face remains in sharp focus while the rest of the image becomes progressively more blurred. This is based upon a simple depth map created by hand in side HitFilm using some planes and masks:

The circle at the top keeps the face in focus, while the left-to-right gradient oval causes her arm to become progressively more blurred. The rest of the image, being black, is fully blurred.

Lens blur can be heavily customized.

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Source Layer can be optionally used to apply a depth map, as shown in the example above.

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You can use various channels from the source layer as the depth map, such as luminance and alpha.

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Radius adjusts the strength of the blur.

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Focal Distance is used to rack focus based on the depth map, adjusting which point on the map is in focus. This is analogous to changing focus on your camera.

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Focal Range defines the depth of field. A larger focal range will cause more of the frame to remain in focus, while a small focal range will cause a shallower area to remain in focus.

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Specular Threshold and Brightness are for customizing the visibility of the iris bokeh. Lower threshold and higher brightness will make the bokeh more obvious. The bokeh shape can be further customized in the Iris section.

The iris section can be used to switch between multiple primitive shapes. These can then be rotated and warped using the curvature, pinch and shift options to create custom shapes.

Motion blur

This uses optical flow techniques to identify movement in a layer and apply artificial motion blur. This can be very useful for animation or for adding exaggerated motion blur to a live action shot.

Radial blur

Creates a circular shaped blur.

The center of the blur can also be moved using the control point in the Viewer.

Zoom blur

A blur emanating out from a central point.

The center of the blur can also be moved using the control point in the Viewer.